In 1968, America needed Earth Rising. On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Three months later, presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down. That same year, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive—the beginning of the end of an unwinnable war and the further tarnishing of America’s image of exceptionalism. And on the campus of Columbia University, 700 students were arrested, ushering in an era of a counterculture college protests movement, proclaiming, “Hell no, we won’t go!” in the current direction of it's nation.
Then came Earth Rising--a photo that changed humanity’s view of itself, and the narrative of a nation. On Christmas Eve, Apollo 8’s Bill Anders seized a unique moment, snapped a picture from his capsule of earth, 238,900 miles away, rising over the lunar horizon. This iconic photo illustrates what King David proclaimed in Psalm 8:1:
O LORD, our Lord, How majestic is Your name in all the earth, Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens! Psalm 8:1
Addir is the Hebrew word for majesty. It encompasses the idea of glory, power, stateliness, and nobility. So, contrary to headlines and popular behavior, things are more majestic than you think when you have a God-view of His creation. We are better than how we often act, especially when you consider that the heavens are not God's greatest creations—we are according to Psalm 8:3-5:
3When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; 4What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? 5Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!
There's that word again—majesty. Man, and only man, wears the God-bestowed splendor that is, not equal to, but associated with the Lord Almighty. In creation, we are second to none—even angels. Why?
First, we are made in His image according to Genesis 1:26-28:
God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over… all the earth 27God created man in His own image… 28God blessed them…
Not that we physically resemble God, but that we are spiritually associated with Him. He is Spirit (John 4:24) and so are we. His worth is immeasurable; so is ours.
Second, we are made in the image of Christ, His Son, according to Romans 8:29:
29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
Christ is the perfect representation of the image of His Father in terms of lived-out holy character, conduct, and spirit. Man isn’t there yet but we’re in the process of getting there—a sanctification—to reflect God through His majestic Son.
Lastly, man is majestic because of the dignity of life according to Genesis 9:6:
Whoever sheds man’s blood by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.
So, when we attack a person, physically or verbally, we attack God, His Son, and tarnish the image we were made in. When we do it to the least of us, we have done it to Christ (Matt. 25:40).
When critics recently mocked on the social media, the autistic son of a national politician for standing up and cheering on television his father, yelling, “That’s my dad! That’s my dad!” those critics unwittingly mocked the majesty of God. We are better than this. Don’t acquiesce to these cynical times we dwell. Don’t live below your place in creation. Live above. Celebrate majesty.
We are Earth Rising.
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